


A Word, Like a Waterfall

by Novels



Series: Reprise [12]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Established Relationship, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, M/M, book-verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 09:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20703590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novels/pseuds/Novels
Summary: And then the day comes, when Elio has to meet Oliver's ex-wife.





	A Word, Like a Waterfall

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it took me almost a week to update, things have been crazy.   
I hope you like this chapter, it was one of the hardest to write :)
> 
> Enjoy!

I met Sarah the following weekend. I spent the days before our lunch trying to focus on my job, rehearsing, practising, answering some of the emails fans and students sent me, keeping in touch with colleagues from abroad, catching up with those on this side of the ocean.

Oliver and I met almost every day, at his, at mine, for coffee, lunch, dinner. I had wondered how hard it would be to find a rhythm that suited both our lives, but I was relieved to see that we fell into it without effort. I suppose when people really want something, they find a way to make it work.

I was still living in a state of elation. At times I would catch myself thinking about Oliver longingly, only to realise that I could call him, or visit him. That realisation, more than anything, would give me a heady rush. Old patterns of sorrow and pain were disrupted, old circuits broken and replaced by a different trail. I felt born anew, unchanged and yet more myself than I ever was. 

As the day of the meeting drew near, though, I could feel anxiety seep into my daily life. I would sit at the piano to play and get lost in thought, fingers lingering on the keys for far too long as I reviewed all the ways that meeting could go wrong, and then some. I would soak in the bathtub for hours, my skin wrinkling slowly on my fingertips, rehearsing what I would say, how I would behave. I would sketch good scenarios as I cooked for Oliver at night and bad scenarios as I helped him wash the dishes. 

I knew, rationally, that I was perfectly able to handle meeting Oliver's ex-wife. For all that I was rather introvert, I knew most people were instinctively drawn to me, and I knew how to exploit that. I had perfected ways to address strangers on the streets, fans at concerts, producers and managers and colleagues in boring offices and recording studios. Sarah was just another new person, the last of a long line of unknown faces. I knew all that, and yet I couldn't help worrying about meeting her. Rationality had nothing to do with what I was feeling. 

When Friday came, I was so antsy Oliver forbade me to touch the stove for fear I would forget what I was doing and burn the building down. He said that jokingly, but I could hear undertones in his voice. Tenderness, fondness, or was it compassion? He seemed surprisingly calm about all this, about me meeting his ex-wife. I wondered how much he was keeping to himself, whether he, too, was feeling anxious about it, just hiding it better.

We hadn't talked about meeting Sarah since we had agreed on a date and time. 

We finally addressed the elephant in the room after dinner. We were sitting on the sofa, Oliver's fingers massaging my hands, one at a time, as I lay in his arms. He'd started doing that after I had played a particularly hard piece one afternoon. It was something I had become quickly addicted to, a new gesture, a new sign of affection, something that he would not have done back in Italy, where I would play for our guests, or my parents, perhaps Mafalda and Anchise, but almost never, with a notable exception, for him alone. 

He kneaded my hands with care, firmly but gently, not at all the way he had done with my foot that afternoon after we had returned from the berm, after our first kiss, after I had got a nosebleed and had to run for ice. I let him work his magic, wondering if he understood how much trust I was putting in him, letting him touch my hands like that, knowing one wrong move could impair my ability to play. It felt amazing, entrusting him with the most precious part of me, with all the precious parts of me, body and soul. He had my hands in his, and his arms around me, and his chest flush against my back, and for a few blissful moments, all I could think of was Oliver, Oliver, Oliver. 

Then he hugged me closer and I could feel him preparing to talk, the way you can sometimes sense that a person is carefully putting a sentence together in their head before uttering it.

"Everything will be fine, Elio." He didn't have to tell me what he was referring to.

"How can you be so sure?" I sunk into his embrace, seeking comfort, reassurance.

"I know her, and I know you." A simple truth, spoken quietly, evenly. It was enough to anchor me, to ground me. Enough to calm my nerves, if not to convince me completely. 

Enough to let me rest in Oliver's arms that night, lost in a dreamless slumber.

*

When Oliver and I arrived Sarah was already waiting for us, sitting at a table outside the restaurant. I felt her eyes on me as she stood to hug Oliver and I remembered what he had told me, about that indescribable intensity she seemed to emanate. As she turned to face me, I had to suppress the instinct to hide behind Oliver. I wasn't scared, not of her, at least, but I was afraid of what she might think of me. I desperately wanted her to like me. I didn't know how to make that happen. I stood, frozen under her gaze as she studied me for a long moment. She was a good-looking woman, all round shapes and soft curves. She had beautiful curly hair, cut short. But it was her eyes that really caught my attention. Where I was ready to find judgement, perhaps even resentment, I could only find curiosity, that sort of stare you get when a person is trying to learn as much as possible about you with one glance only. It felt like being X-rayed, like having to stand stark naked in front of a doctor, ready to be poked and prodded everywhere in search of a problem, or perhaps an answer. It felt alien, uncomfortable but not painful, so I let her look at me and I stared back, looking, really looking at her in turn. And eventually, after what must have been mere seconds but truly felt like an eternity, she nodded at me and held her hand out. Smiling. 

"We meet at last, Elio." She said it lightly as we shook hands, no trace of irony or sarcasm in her voice. "I've heard a lot about you." I saw her throw a side glance at Oliver and I noticed he'd blushed slightly at her remark. Once again, I wondered just how much he'd told her about us back in 1983. I was starting to suspect that  _ really everything _ would be the best answer to that.

"I'm glad we found the time to meet properly, Sarah." I'm glad we found the courage to meet properly, Sarah. 

To my surprise, I felt I was being honest. Of course I had dreaded the idea of meeting her, but now that it was happening, I felt it had been the right thing to do.

We took our seats and chatted as we waited for our food, covering the basics. Our jobs, our families, the weather, my music -- I'd love to play for you, of course. I’ll have to try this recipe of yours.

But none of us was particularly good at small talk and, by the time our desserts were placed in front of us and the waiter had walked back inside, we had run out of neutral topics. So she asked. 

"Are you back together, then?" 

I chewed on the spoonful of pie I'd just scooped into my mouth, looking at Oliver, buying time. We hadn't really discussed this, as usual, and I was regretting shrinking away from the topic for the past week. But Oliver just looked at me and said yes. No doubt, no wavering, no uncertainty. Just yes, an innocent three-letter word that held so much meaning I feared it would explode in a waterfall of sounds, and syllables, and consonants, and vowels.

"I'm glad you found your way back to each other, at last." 

She must have seen the surprise, perhaps even the scepticism in my eyes because she added "truly," and it came out forceful, sincere, willing me to believe it. I did believe it. I was amazed by it. I was humbled by it. And at that moment, finally, I realised things were really going to be fine, and what lay ahead had never looked brighter. And for the first time in twenty years, I took a breath and truly, completely let my grief go.


End file.
